Posted on 03/13/2020 10:41:05 PM PDT by rintintin
Thursday night Seema Verma, one of the top members of the White House coronavirus task force and the current head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, repeatedly dodged when Fox News’ Martha MacCallum grilled her over possible ventilator shortages.
Tucker Carlson was so stunned by that exchange he invited Verma on his show Friday night and opened by saying, “I watched that exchange last night, and I must be honest with you, I was really troubled by it. Because you were asked a direct question by Martha MacCallum, ‘do we have enough ventilators in ICU units,’ and you appeared to intentionally not answer it, so I’m going to ask you that question again and hope that we will be reassured by the answer. Do we have enough ventilators to treat a surge in cases coronavirus right now, do you believe?”
“We have stockpile of ventilators. So right now today we are able to address people that need ventilators,” Verma said. “Our strategy though is to not make the situation worse, but there is a stockpile of ventilators. The president talked about ventilators today and said we’re going to purchase more to make sure that we have that backup supply.”
Carlson pressed on specifics, asking, “Can you put some meat on those bones and give us a sense of how many ventilators are in place? How many are in the stockpile? How many do you think we will need?”
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaite.com ...
hospitals don’t keep a dozen extra ventilators around just in case a covid comes around once in a lifetime.....because they need STAFF to operate them including registered nurses and respiratory techs....and they don’t keep extra nurses and RT’s in the back closet just in case..
how can you possibly know if we have enough. It depends on how many Americans are going to get the virus at the same time. They’ve ordered more just in case but what would you have her do, give you a number and then everyone panics thinking they will be the one who won’t get one
Well, we had more than enough before the pandemic but because we are dealing with the unknown here there is no way to even attempt an estimate. But what I do know is, if we don’t, Americans are innovative enough to come up with a solution if needed. The only way to say there is for sur enough would be to have one for each and every American.
Sounds like she didn’t want to answer candidly, which is scary.
There are things she could have said though, but did not. We who read a lot know about the supply depots and warehouses with emergency “kits” for deployment.
By doing estimates? Is this difficult?
Exactly right. Martha and Tucker both asked a really stupid question.
The rank inefficiency of government is on full display, not just on a federal level but state wide and locally also.
There are very few people that get this virus that are going to need ventilators, there have been SEVERAL people that have already recovered and have said it was like the flu their fevers broke in about 4 days and after about 7 days they were up and around!! A gal from WA. and 8 of her friends all contracted the virus she was on Trish Regans show tonight she and her friends are ALL doing fine no hospitalizations no ventilators Tucker is really starting to PISS ME OFF!! Most of the people getting the virus are getting well at home just fine!!!
Screw tucker. Every news outlet in America is reporting the worse case scenario as if it has already happened. tucker was only interested in finding fault in how we got here. He should be a cheerleader for America, but he diminished every thing that is being done. I wont be watching tucker again.
No, it’s a critical question, completely relevant to the situation at hand.
Ventilators are critical to the ICU patients. A much smaller number might need ECMO machines (blood oxygenator).
She should have answers to that. It’s critical to preparedness. Maybe she has answers and the situation is dire, so she doesn’t want to say.
The last survey, not sure when it was done, indicated 62,000 ventilators across the country. I’ve seen articles estimating that the number now is between 62,000 and 110,000.
If 2 million Americans get this and 10% need ICU, then that’s 200,000 patients. And maybe 100,000 ventilators will be enough.
If 100 million Americans get it, that’s 10 million patients. It’s a 2 to 3 week hospital stay for the 20% that need it. In this scenario 100,000 ventilators is so insufficient it will drive the death rate up dramatically. Doctors will be making the kinds of decisons made in Italy now. Who has the better chance to survive and thus gets a chance, and who doesn’t.
And we’ll be looking at 6 to 8% deaths like Italy.
I am wondering WHY IN THE HELL haven’t any of these shows has guests on from these cruise ships that have fully recovered from this virus WHY!! I am so sick to death of NOTHING but their damn doom and gloom!! Having guests on that are fully recovered telling the masses the TRUTH about how really mild the virus was would go a long way to calm people BUT they dont care about calming people they only care about creating the NEXT hysteria!! GIVE ME A DAMN BREAK!!!
Mainly at the State level - because all hospitals here are subject to an unelected state board that determines what they can do in a year. Really convenient they can attempt to abrogate everything they’ve done to limit that now and point fingers at the feds.
The problem here is that you could have 25-million ventilators but they aren’t in everyone’s backyard. There’s probably a state-by-state distribution system. So the virus strikes up big-time in Arkansas over a 72-hour period, and they are short by 50-percent on the ventilators. Trying to move these from Oregon or Idaho over? In the three or four days it’d take to realize the problem, order this and a trucker to move the requirement....500 people would be dead.
The system just isn’t built the way that Tucker thinks it should work.
>> If 100 million Americans get it...
But exactly, how many will get it?
We won’t be like Italy because we didn’t sell our leather factories to the Wuhan Chinese.
Tucker is running scared on this and scare mongering while he’s at it. Again, while it’s more infectious they are reporting number of cases as if everyone who has it dies whereas the vast majority of people who get it recover fully and we will eventually find that most of the people who have had it won’t even know they’ve had it. The media is fear mongering like crazy to affect the election. The number of respirators on hand does not correlate to the the number of people who will be exposed because most of those people will not need a respirator. The ones who are at risk are people who have poor health due to existing conditions and elderly people which have been the majority of people who have unfortunately succumbed to the disease.
That depends entirely on our response. If we quarantine, social distance, use good hygiene, etc. we can drive the number down. China, S. Korea, Singapore, Taiwan all managed to do it.
Italy, France, Germany, UK and the US have so far failed to slow the spread. The US is 2-3 weeks behind Europe.
And 100,000 ventilators can handle 100 million people if it's spread out over 20 weeks.
If it continues spreading at the rate it's spreading, the 145,000 world wide cases today will be 1 million with 2 weeks and 10 million within 4 weeks.
The US 2000 cases today, will probably have a spurt due to testing to 10,000 by the end of next week, and then hit 100,000 three weeks from now, and 1 million five weeks from now. That's 5 weeks from 100% demand for 100,000 ventilators. 3rd week in April.
Maybe massive testing, isolation, hygiene will slow it.
Maybe we will have a warm April and it will slow it.
True. Tom Hanks has it and doesn’t seem to be doing too badly.
Ideally, it should be a national security function of the military to stockpile such devices in their medical centers and to train technicians to use them.
At least it would help our own country’s rapid response to an accidental experimental virus release, such as the one in Wuhan.
In practice, it costs mucho dinero. But then again, how much do the Feds waste annually studying turtles on treadmills, duck penises, or even “climate” change?
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